


Awake, Asleep

by DrPearlGatsby



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: And I mean that very literally, Cuddling, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Force Bond (Star Wars), Post-TLJ, Rey Needs A Hug, Reylo Week 2020, here come the sads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:14:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23922157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrPearlGatsby/pseuds/DrPearlGatsby
Summary: “I saw you,” Rey says carefully, outlining what she remembers, not just what he looked like but what hefeltlike in that moment. “And there was a look in your eyes, like…” Tears start to prickle at the corners of her own eyes.“Like?” he repeats.“Like you loved me.”
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 12
Kudos: 127
Collections: REYLO WEEK 2020





	Awake, Asleep

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the third day of Reylo Week 2020 to fill the prompt Destiny. More force bonds, more feelings.
> 
> Also, the [title and opening lyrics quote](https://youtu.be/5R8hP3Z-Kts) are borrowed from the band [MissThis](https://linktr.ee/missthisband), who write songs about Reylo and other Star Wars things (and maybe occasionally not Star Wars). [Check them out!](https://open.spotify.com/artist/7JrQSSTw9YXJ3U1jjH8O74)

**.**

_Maybe fate makes fools of us all…_

**.**

The force bond slips into place just as Rey has climbed into bed and settled onto her side. She’s been training all day, and between the mental strain of the Jedi practices and the physical strain of combat, she’s totally exhausted. So when Kylo Ren—no, Ben—appears on his back just a few feet from her, his eyes closed and hands folded on his chest, she doesn’t move to attempt to close the bond. It’s something to do with the force that she feels more settled when he’s near, and tonight she just can’t bring herself to question it.

He’s still awake; she can feel it; but he doesn’t move, not for long moments. Finally his eyes blink open slowly and he glances at her out of the corner of his eye. His expression remains neutral as he closes his eyes again, giving a heavy sigh.

They connect more often when they’re asleep, Rey’s found. More than once she’s awoken to the soothing sound of his breathing beside her, just an arm’s length away. She knows he knows about it, too—knows that he must wake some nights to find her there unawares also. It’s a testament to something that he hasn’t tried to kill her in her sleep—though, then, she wonders if the bond would allow for that at all.

_Ben Solo’s still in there somewhere_ , she reminds herself, watching his chest rise and fall. Her lamp is still on the dimmest setting—she’d been about to reach up to turn it off when he’d appeared. She leaves it.

“You’re aching all over,” he finally says, his voice low.

Rey does her best to hide her surprise. It’s the first time they’ve connected consciously that the first thing he’s said to her hasn’t been touched by his feelings of betrayal, hasn’t been a dig on her cause or an insult. She knows she’s hurt him, but she holds fast; she can’t forget the image of him from her vision, reassuring and heroic and wielding a blue lightsaber. She casts about for something to say, but nothing seems appropriate. He’s made a statement, not asked a question—without her saying anything at all he’ll know what muscle groups she’s working, just how she’s pushed herself today.

Presently he shifts on the bed, turning onto one side so that he’s facing her. He rests one hand in the space between them and Rey laughs suddenly in spite of herself.

“What?” His question is soft, purely curious.

“It looks like you’re floating.” Rey holds her hands apart to demonstrate the distance in her material reality, “The bed ends here. You’re just—in the air. I thought, _what a stupid use of the Force_.”

He hums a non-answer, his eyes tracing over her. He’s wearing that same frown as always but his eyes have gone tender, and _to hell with it_ Rey starts looking, too: the sleeveless white undershirt that exposes his muscular arms and defined chest, the curtain of mussed dark hair that frames his face, the luxurious gray blanket that covers him from the waist down, the way his overlarge features together make such a startlingly handsome face.

Recognition flares in his eyes. She’s projecting again.

Rey closes her mind off tighter, letting her eyes fall shut. She doesn’t know what particularly she’s referring to—it’s everything and nothing—when she says, “I can’t keep doing this.”

His voice is low, firm but lacking in urgency. The same tired fact, the same entreaty: “You could change it. Any day, any moment you could change your mind and still join me.”

“That’s not what I mean.” She thinks, _that’s not what I saw_.

“What did you see?”

Rey opens her eyes again. He’s just watching her, a furrow between his brows. This time it isn’t a challenge; this time it’s only a question.

“I saw you,” Rey says carefully, outlining what she remembers, not just what he looked like but what he _felt_ like in that moment. “And there was a look in your eyes, like…” Tears start to prickle at the corners of her own eyes as she remembers. A look like peace, like trust.

“Like?” he repeats.

She drops their eye contact, looking instead at a point on the far wall behind him. She yearns for another moment like the night by the fire, the night he’d reached out to touch her hand and told her she wasn’t alone. She burns with the pain of having glimpsed that man only to see him retreat again into the dark, and it’s some combination of all this that compels her to finish her sentence—“Like you loved me.”

“I already love you.”

It’s a fact she thinks she’s known incidentally through the bond, but it strikes her to hear it. Her voice wavers. “I had loved you, too.”

“‘Had,’” he repeats to himself quietly. “But not anymore?”

Rey doesn’t speak, memorizing his face. _Yes_ , not anymore, not this cold and reckless Supreme Leader. _No_ , “had” and “have” and “does” and “will,” especially in these moments when he slips and becomes Ben Solo again but even when he isn’t because she craves his presence, has to clench her hands into fists even now to stop herself from reaching for him.

He rises up on one elbow and suddenly he is much closer, _just_ beside her, pulling her into his chest with one arm and tucking her head under his chin. His body is heavy and smells like expensive soap and curls around her like a fortress.

And Rey just cries. She cries until she’s out of tears, and when he’s still there and he doesn’t let go she lays one hand flat against his chest, feeling his heartbeat under her fingertips. Neither of them speaks—neither of them moves much either, and then only to relax more fully into each other.

Rey knows as she begins to drift off that he won’t be there in the morning. She’ll wake alone in her room to an empty bed, Rey Nobody of the Resistance, sworn enemy of Kylo Ren, Supreme Leader of the First Order. But that moment is not this moment and she savors it for all its worth—in which she is only Rey the woman, resting protected and safe in the arms of Ben the man.


End file.
